Armed only with a bucket full of enthusiasm, a wiki full of miss-information and a 2 digit IQ, the good Captain seeks not only to understand the modern world, but also fix one or two bits of kit along the way.

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Friday, 10 October 2014

The New RaspberryPi B+

I feel like the last kid on the block to get one of these new Pi models.

But here are a few comments and observations on the latest product from the Raspberry Pi Foundation.

This is my 7th Pi which now includes models A, B rev 1, B rev 2 & B+.

The RaspberryPi is slowly evolving. First came the model B with 256MB RAM, which was soon replaced by revision 2, having 512MB RAM.

The appearance of the A and B models has always looked a little awkward to me, especially the way the USB sockets hang out from the board, while the network socket sits neatly along the edge of the board.

The new B+ has a much more pleasing appearance, with USB and network sockets properly aligned along the edge of the board. The old composite video socket has been removed, with a new AV socket providing both audio and video outputs.

The B+ also has 4 sensibly positioned fixing holes, and loads of extra inputs & outputs to play with.

RaspberryPi model B+ alongside the model B

The appearance and layout of the earlier board is not an issue when you consider the original market for the RaspberryPi: Education

However, if you want to use the Pi for battery powered projects, there are a few points to consider.

The Foot-print

Although the B+ has the same sized board as before, the selection and positioning of the connectors has helped to reduce the overall foot-print.

Aligning the USB connectors with the edge of the board has saved approximately 5mm.

The removal of the video phono socket has saved 8mm, but this is reduced to 6mm due to the sighting of the new AV socket.

But the biggest change is the move from SD to uSD card, which has taken approximately 15mm from the foot-print.

When fitting the RaspberryPi into a box suitable for your battery powered project, you will also have to consider any peripherals. The space occupied by USB dongles and connectors may result in a much larger box than expected.

But if you are running a headless Pi with a dumpy wifi dongle and powering the board via GPIO pins, the foot-print is pretty minimal.

Power Consumption

The RaspberryPi consumes just a few watts, which is great if you want to leave it running all day, every day from a mains power supply. But the power consumption is still a bit of an issue for battery powered projects.

Every milli-amp of precious battery current counts. So with that in mind I carried out some simple tests.

These measurements are not absolute values. They are just to give a simple comparison between models. But it is clear that the new power circuit in the B+ offers clear power savings over the original model B.

However, the model A is still the lowest power option (and the lightest, if your project involves "taking to the sky").